Nama-owned apartments need not be left lying idle

NEWTON'S OPTIC: THE IRISH Timesbrings you this exclusive extract from 101 Uses for a Nama-owned Apartment, the novelty publishing sensation of the year (and at least the next 10 years).

1. Housing the vulnerable

Empty flats could be used to house the vulnerable. Housing vulnerable people in poorly designed apartment complexes is always a tremendous success.

2. Guantánamo resettlement

The two former prisoners Ireland is taking from Guantánamo Bay might find new-build apartments surprisingly spacious. For a while, anyway. As long as we don’t put them both in the same apartment. And they aren’t particularly tall.

3. Emergency chemist

Why should only students get their drugs from half-deserted blocks of flats? No angry pharmacist could ever be as intimidating as the negative equity on a docklands duplex. Ideal for dispensing anti-depressants (lower floors only).

4. Secure ATM site

Put your bank’s cash machine beyond the reach of a stolen digger (upper floors only). Note that the apartment must be larger than the cash machine. Also, note that this is not the same way your bank has used apartments as cash machines before.

5. Virgin Mary shrine

Available in all units with wood-effect laminate flooring.

6. Socialist travel agency

Seize the means of recreation with a worker-occupied co-operative travel squat. Experience glasnost-style open five-year-plan living, low ceilings, penetrating damp, poor natural light and the atmosphere of booking a trip to Leningrad at an Intourist office in 1987.

7. Czarist travel agency

Need to send a minister and his wife to eight countries in six days on the government jet? Need to be absolutely certain that they make it to such vital international events as the premier of Len Roach's Carry On Killing those Prodsat the Odious Multiplex, Cricklewood? Need a whole team of civil servants to sort it out? Then why not base them in a luxury penthouse? You can't think of a single reason, can you?

8. Budget airline baggage-drop

Leave your luggage in an empty flat near the airport and pick it up when you get back. Assuming you do get back, or ever get away in the first place.

9. Green Party 2010 conference venue

To avoid echoing during speeches, a studio apartment is advised. Studio apartments are also advised for next year’s Sinn Féin ardfheis, Galway Helicopter Expo and social partnership talks.

10. Government safehouse

Cheap, isolated, anonymous accommodation for witnesses, jurors, any other law-abiding citizens of Limerick and members of “An Bord Snip Nua”.

11. Bus corridor

Very small buses could operate along the corridors of unsold developments in the Dublin quays. Some corridor realignment may be necessary. Weekday mornings and afternoons only. Bicycles on balconies also permitted.

12. Protestant school

Choose from one- and two-bedroom units, depending on how many pupils you have left after Batt O’Keeffe cuts your grant.

13. Indoor farm

During the boom, many apartments were developed on agricultural land. Now it is time to reverse the trend and develop agricultural land inside apartments. By applying the principles of the traditional window-box to its whole 100sq ft acreage, the average apartment can keep a family of four alive until claustrophobia drives them to kill each other . . . and so, so many more.